I haven’t written one of these climate posts for a long time, but a trip to Namibia brought into focus just how violent geological and climate change has been in the Earth’s history and how the latter threatens our species and every other living organism on the planet today. The configuration of land masses on Earth did not always look as it does today. Eight hundred million years ago, Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, and parts of the Indian Subcontinent were one land mass known as Gondwana . Here is what that supercontinent looked like 420 million years ago. Gondwanaland eventually separated east and west along a north-south axis, as you can see if you look at the coastlines of Brazil and Namibia. They fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Prior to the violent geological separation, about 280 million years ago, a dramatic warming event occurred in Gondwanaland at the end of an Ice Age. Eighty- to 100-meter-tall pine trees growing in what ...